You know what it's like this time of year. Last week you were running around finishing up your gift shopping. Even if your people opted out of the materialistic insanity, and you were buying only for the kids, it was still impossible to complete in the allotted time. (And then the gifts had to be wrapped!) You're maybe having some friends over, which means cleaning up the place so they don't think you're a total slob, shopping for something halfway decent to serve them so you don't have to order in pizza. (And then there's the hangover and the cleaning up the next day.) You're maybe having to travel to get to wherever you're celebrating.

So imagine on top of all of that, you have the sweet glorious nightmare of a pile of awards screeners staring you in the face. Believe me, I know how cool this is: right at this very moment, I'm staring at a pile of DVDs -- DVDs that I could put in my player right now -- of flicks like Atonement and The Diving Bell and the Butterfly and The Golden Compass and No Country for Old Men and Juno and The Orphanage... well, you get the idea. And they torture me, the way they're staring back at me, beckoning me: "You know you want to watch me," they're all saying. "You know you feel obligated as a professional film critic to give me another look before you starting finalizing your best-of lists, right?" A few are actually chiding me: "Do you want to be falling down on the job, you slacker?"

I don't need this kind of stress right now.

And then there are all the other movies I didn't have a chance to see during the year, and so screeners of those movies are actually sobbing: "You're not going to utterly ignore me again," they wail, "like you did when you could have seen me in a theater, the way movies are supposed to be seen? How can you possibly consider your assessment of the year complete without at least a quick glance at me?"

I wish I could harden my heart against these movies, but I can't. I want to watch them. I want to have 48 hours in every day so I can get through them all. What I really wanted for Christmas is Hermione Granger's Time Turner. I wish someone told Santa.

My ballot for the year-end awards of the Online Film Critics Society, of which I am a member, arrived in my email in-box this morning. I have a week before it has to be turned in. A week to get through all these movies. If you don't hear from me in a week, send coffee.

-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
MaryAnn Johanson (email me)
reviews, reviews, reviews! at FlickFilosopher.com

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